11 October, 2005

Clean conscience

Today's Guardian reviews a range of ethical washing-up liquids.  Ethical washing-up liquids.  For ****'s sake.

I often buy an 'environmentally-friendly' variety of washing-up liquid, in a biodegradable bottle, but if it wasn't readily available at Sainsburys, or was sold at a premium price, I wouldn't. I certainly wouldn't patronise a wholefood hippie shop (other than in the "aren't you a smug little co-operative?" sense of 'patronise') if that was the only source of such a product.

It's simple common sense to minimise one's impact on the natural (and indeed developed) environment, but it's not remotely an issue of ethics. It's doing something because it's rational, not because it's the 'right' thing to do, which conveys a warm, fuzzy glow of pathetic self-satisfaction.

This is one of my biggest problems with Greens. Their objectives often (okay, sometimes) make sense, but not when their messages are expressed in terms of quasi-religious morality, by the self-righteous.